What Winemaking Has Taught Me About Being a Print Industry OEM

By Dino Pagliarello, Sharp

Since 2006, my family has come together to make wine. We crush the grapes by hand. We talk. We argue about technique. We tell the same stories we tell every year. And when the work is done, we put the wine in an American Oak barrel and wait.

We call it Dino’s Vino, but the name is almost beside the point. What matters is the process and the continuity. This is not a hobby we picked up for novelty. It is a tradition that connects generations all the way back to the old country. The people standing around those bins today are the same people who stood there years ago and hopefully will be there years from now. Wine becomes a marker of time. You open a bottle and remember where you were, who was there, and what mattered that year.

Over time, I have realized that winemaking did more than give me an appreciation for a good glass of wine. It shaped how I think about responsibility, leadership, and what it truly means to be an OEM in the print industry.

You Are Not Making a Product for Today

One of the hardest lessons in winemaking is accepting that the work you do today is not for immediate gratification. The wine will not tell you right away if you did things correctly. You will only know months or years later, when it is too late to change the decisions, you made at

the beginning.

Being an OEM works the same way. Product decisions made today will define customer experiences long after the launch announcements fade. Architecture choices, component quality, serviceability, and workflow assumptions all live on in the field. Customers carry those decisions with them every day they run your equipment.

As an OEM leader, you have to think beyond what sells now and consider what still needs to work five, seven, or ten years down the road. That requires restraint. It requires resisting shortcuts. It requires asking difficult questions before problems surface.

Winemaking teaches humility here. Once fermentation starts, you cannot undo careless choices. In product management, the same is true. The cost of impatience always shows up later.

Craft Is Discipline, Not a Feature

When people talk about craftsmanship, they often describe it as passion or pride. Those things matter, but craftsmanship is really about discipline. It is about doing unglamorous work consistently, even when no one is watching.

In winemaking, that means cleaning equipment thoroughly, monitoring temperatures, tracking timing, checking sugar levels, and accepting that small mistakes compound. There is no such thing as a minor oversight. Every detail carries weight.

In production print, craftsmanship shows up in places customers may never see directly. It lives in mechanical tolerances, software stability, service documentation, and long-term parts availability. It lives in how easy a machine is to maintain and how predictable it is under pressure.

I believe craftsmanship is part of our responsibility to the market. Customers build businesses around our technology. They schedule jobs, hire staff, and make capital investments based on the expectation that our equipment will perform consistently. That expectation deserves respect.

Craftsmanship is not about adding features. It is about honoring the trust that comes with being an OEM.

Blending Is Where Real Innovation Happens

In winemaking, blending is one of the most misunderstood steps. People often think blending is about fixing problems. In reality, it is about balance. Different grapes bring

different strengths. One adds structure. Another adds aroma. Another brings softness or depth.

The goal is not to showcase a single element. The goal is to create something stronger than any individual component.

OEM innovation works the same way. The most successful products are rarely the result of one dominant idea. They are the outcome of blending engineering, software, service insight, customer feedback, and partner expertise into a cohesive whole.

This is especially true in production print, where no device exists in isolation. Presses live inside workflows. They interact with finishing equipment, substrates, operators, and business models. If an OEM focuses too heavily on one dimension while ignoring the others, the solution becomes unbalanced.

Leadership means knowing when to push for differentiation and when to blend strengths thoughtfully. Winemaking teaches you that restraint and balance often produce the most enduring results.

Consistency Is the Real Brand Promise

When you open a bottle from a trusted winery, you have expectations. You may enjoy discovering nuance, but you expect consistency. That consistency is what builds loyalty.

In print, consistency is everything. Customers may forgive the occasional issue, but they do not forgive unpredictability. They want to know how a device will behave on Monday morning, during peak season, and years into ownership.

As an OEM, your brand is not defined by your best product. It is defined by your most common experience. That experience is shaped by how consistently you deliver performance, service, and support.

Winemaking reinforces this truth year after year. A single great vintage does not create a legacy. A long record of dependable ones does.

Responsibility Extends Beyond the Sale

When we bottle our wine, we know that what we are handing to friends and family represents us. We will be there when it opens. We will hear the feedback. That accountability changes how seriously you take the work.

OEMs should feel that same sense of accountability. The responsibility does not end when equipment ships. It continues through installation, training, service, upgrades, and eventual replacement.

Production print customers are partners, not transactions. Their success reflects directly on the decisions we make upstream. Winemaking reinforces that responsibility because you cannot hide from the outcome. The bottle always tells the truth.

Passion Sustains the Long View

There are easier ways to spend a weekend than crushing grapes or bottling wine. We do it because it provides an opportunity to spend time with those that mean the most to us. That unique family tradition creates a passion to do it right,year after year.

In the print industry, passion is what sustains long term thinking. It is what keeps teams focused on quality when pressure mounts. It is what motivates continuous improvement instead of complacency.

Passion is not loud. It is steady. It shows up in preparation, in listening, and in the willingness to keep refining the process.

The Lesson That Endures

Each year, when we finally open a bottle of Dino’s Vino, we talk about what worked and what did not. Those conversations shape the next vintage. The process never really ends.

Leading in production print feels the same way. The work is ongoing. Each product cycle teaches lessons that inform the next. The goal is not perfection. The goal is stewardship.

Winemaking taught me that meaningful outcomes are the result of patience, discipline, balance, consistency, and care. Those same principles guide how I think about being an OEM today.

In both cases, you are not just making something. You are carrying forward a responsibility to the people who trust the process.

And that is something worth taking seriously.